L2 Journal: An electronic refereed journal for foreign and second language educators

In this article, I will discuss the importance of the fundamental aspect of “bridging” in the wider context of language teaching. I will use “bridging” particularly in terms of cultural differences and underline the pivotal role of specific techniques, in a language class as well as in a pedagogy class or seminar, to help finding common ground between groups of people with different backgrounds. In this sense, I will highlight the beneficial role that multicultural native speakers play in language departments, as examples of successful integration in another culture, as “bridges” between two cultures who physically embody the joining of two or more backgrounds and effectively erase the distance between the two, and as travellers who have geographically bridged the distance between two countries. Drawing from my experience both as a multicultural native speaker and as an instructor in a language class, I will illustrate a few examples of in-class strategies aimed at promoting multiculturality, ranging from simple vocabulary presentations to role playing and target language discussion groups focusing on controversial differences between the countries, and discuss the importance of the mediating role of multicultural instructors. Finally, I will argue that multilingual and multicultural native speakers are key players of globalization, and are able, in class, to transmit with their own physicality the very condition of our globalized society, which rests on the ability to bridge cultural gaps and accept a less determined, more fluid identity.